Do you ever feel like you've chosen the wrong path?
And even though you were lucky enough to choose a different path, you
still chose the wrong one?
And then you repeated it a dozen times...
There were 3 paths I came across in my life:
The easy path
The path they wanted me to take
The path I really wanted to take
I took 'the easy path' a fair few times. And it probably merged with
'the path they wanted me to take' most of the time too.
I've studied probably between 3 and 5 different courses/subjects over
the past couple of years. Most of which I had less than half interest in and
eventually ended up quitting.
I did them because 1. It would shut people up and 2. It was easier than getting a job.
But it's basically a downward spiral when you do things to keep the peace and make other people happy.
I never chose path #3 because that would mean taking a risk and doing something I wanted to do
that almost everyone would probably advise me not to do.
But having chosen every path possible and either failed, quit or got bored of them all I no
longer even know how to get back to the place where I can chose the path I really want to take.
And I'll always be at war with myself concerning if it's the right choice to make.
There's two main things holding me back:
1. What people will think. (I'm highly unprepared for the opinions of other people).
2. I'm probably going to be broke or have to get a job additionally.
Right now, it feels a lot like the path I'm walking down is not the right one.
And like it has a dead end.
It's not that I don't want a career as a make up artist.
It's that it no longer has the high level of importance it had at the start.
It's that, it feels like I've wasted all my life running in circles at everyone else's request.
And I'm really tired of being dizzy.
When I was 14, I found music. And by finding music, I found something I
could believe in that never let me down or leave me.
And something that would make everything better, even just for a brief moment.
Then I found out explaining feelings and situations in a song was ten times easier than
saying it or writing it down in a general way.
So I started writing songs.
Then I quit when I was 16 after the combined decision that
1. I couldn't sing very well.
And 2. The odds of me being able to stand on a stage were very slim.
As I got older, music became more important to me than most other things.
There was never any career or job that I was ever interested in getting,
I only ever wanted to sing and write songs. Nothing else interested me after that.
So, path #1 was study, path #2 was get a good job or career and path #3 was music.
And as I mentioned, paths #1 and #2 pretty much merged throughout my life.
And I never really stepped foot onto path #3.
Currently, although there's only 3 logical paths.
It feels like I'm lost in a puzzle of 1000 different paths.
xo
"My suicide note will be a piece of paper with my tumblr url in a envelope with the blades they never knew about"
I wrote that ten months ago on a tumblr blog that no one knows about, but is entirely viewable publicly.
It's a blog I started in 2012 with no other intention other than I needed somewhere to release all the
darkness from my mind.
And I wrote that because it's true. If people went on my tumblr they would probably understand
a hell of a lot more of what's going on with me than they do right now.
Because there's no light in depression. Only dark.
And it gets darker and darker. Until one day, you think 'fuck this'.
And you discover pencil sharpeners have blades.
Then all of a sudden you have no working pencil sharpeners.
All your pencils become dull and blunt.
But the blades are sharp.
You might not have any sharp pencils anymore...
But you sure as hell have a bunch of scars and cuts.
All hidden under sleeves or carefully concealed with make up.
The blog is what the inside of my mind looks like on bad days.
And having looked through 7 pages of old posts, I can tell you that on my bad days
I still feel that way. I still stand by everything I've posted. Because I still relate to feeling that way.
It's still relevant.
And I still post things on there sometimes.
In a twisted way, it helps me.
I can read posts on there and remember exactly how I felt when I was writing it.
Whereas without that post, I couldn't tell you how I felt because I block everything out.
The days I use that blog are the days where I sit alone in my room.
Wondering how I got through so many months.
And why I'm still here.
Where I listen to sad songs really loudly and try to block out my thoughts.
Some days, that's all I do, I just sit there and wonder.
Because for the life of me I don't know how I got from the little girl that didn't
speak to the teenager with cuts on her arms.
xo
Being sixteen sucked a lot more than I thought it would.
I wouldn't recommend it. Or choose to live it again. Even if it was to live it a different way.
Being a teenager feels a lot like a form of madness anyway, but add manipulation
into the mix and you get a lifelong nightmare.
My mother is an unintentional, subtle bragger. The kind that openly talks about her
children and family to complete strangers.
She did the very same thing to her driving instructor; I don't know what she told him, but
she told him enough for me to get invited to go and help out at the drama club he was a
part of.
I was sixteen. And on a mission to prove to everyone that I wasn't that 4 year old with
the anxiety issues anymore.
So I went. Having been convinced by my mother it was a good idea.
I willingly got in the car with him, had a conversation and went to the drama club.
He was a nice guy, friendly. The kinda person that had a lot of friends, knew a lot of
people in the community and everyone liked him.
He specialised in teaching people to drive who were nervous.
On paper, this guy was good.
Over time, I learnt he wasn't all that friendly or a good person in the slightest.
I was never an average sixteen year old, I was still so young
and so naive. And my understanding of what was right and what was wrong
was very little.
I never knew that him holding my hand or hugging me or touching my leg
was inappropriate. I completely disregarded it all. I brushed it off as him being
friendly.
Gradually, over time, the attention he gave me became unwanted.
He would text me several times during the week. It would usually be just
general talk, but it was frequent. As if he was purposely making sure he was
present in my life.
He told me I had a problem with saying yes. And he mocked me for it.
I immediately hated anyone that made fun of me. I removed them from my life
because they weren't worth the drama.
But removing him from my life was more of a challenge than everyone else.
I could ignore everyone else and they'd drift out of my life.
I couldn't ignore him.
He was arrogant, he belittled me, he manipulated the way I thought.
I felt obliged to always say yes to him. And saying no just wasn't an option.
Until eventually, he went too far. Little to my knowledge he planned what he was
gonna do that night. And maybe all along, everything was planned and I was just blind to it.
He picked me up night after night, every week, like clockwork. But he drove a different way
that night. It was a small village, there were backroads and dead ends everywhere.
He parked up a dead end, in the pitch black, where even if I ran I wouldn't know where to go.
The only sounds were the engine and probably my heartbeat doing overtime with panic.
This was the worst possible situation and I've never felt more uncomfortable in my entire life.
I couldn't run, I was frozen to the spot.
I could barely even breathe thanks to my heartbeat.
I played with my phone, head down, making no eye contact for as long as I could.
He didn't like that. He didn't like the focus being on something other than him.
I guess it frustrated him and he decided to take control.
He told me to get in the back of the car and it was the only time I ever said no to him.
It was a mumbled, quiet 'no'. But it was said more than once.
He stole my first kiss from me, I didn't want him to steal anything else.
The fact that he, a man in his 40's, had (and was) prepared to have sex with a clearly
vulnerable sixteen year old girl in the back seat of his car in the middle of no where
makes me want to throw up.
I gave no consent and no indication that I ever wanted anything from him.
And yet, for months and months after I would search my mind for something that I
must of done wrong.
Because as far as I was concerned it was all my fault.
After that, I still went with him to the drama club every week. He still drove me there.
And it's like nothing ever happened.
He thought I had a problem with saying yes, but I had a problem with saying no.
He was mad at me, I could feel it. He didn't get his own way and maybe he wasn't used to that.
In a short space of time, we had two arguments.
One by text: He decided he was going to drive in on his motorbike and wanted to pick me up on it.
Saying no to him was still a huge challenge. I was barely capable of it. He was so good at controlling
and manipulating me. It's like he had a higher power over me. Even after I said no to him before.
But it was slightly easier over text. And although I said no to him, the texts between us threw me
into complete emotional distress. He ruined me. Without even being there.
I didn't see him for a week or two.
And then he had a motorbike accident. I wasn't sorry. I wasn't sad. I wished death on him.
I genuinely, wholeheartedly wished he was dead.
He broke his knee and couldn't drive for a few weeks.
After that, the second argument came. He picked me up as usual and for the life of me,
I cannot remember what we argued about. Something completely irrelevant.
It was one of those arguments where everything was building up and it was inevitable it was
gonna explode at some point. And it did.
He turned the car around sharply and recklessly drove me home.
I went home crying and attempted to feed my parents some lies about what had happened.
After that, I never saw him again.
And began the hard process of trying to forget what had happened.
But failing that, I lived with it.
I always considered it to be minor. Because worse things happened to people.
We moved out of the area, but no matter where I go, it's always there.
xo
A playlist of my favourite songs can tell you more about me than any words
I can get to stumble out of my mouth.
I grew up with a boyband listening sister who then moved onto listening to RnB.
And logically, you'd half expect having been subjected to that music it'd be the kinda
music I listened to - but it's the only kind of music I don't like.
I shared a room with her for almost all of my childhood - much to my dismay.
I drew a line in the middle of the room, I took her stuff and put it in the bin, made sure
the cigarettes she was hiding were on full display to our parents and ripped her detention slip up
so she'd get into further trouble (she needed it to show at school).
Sisterly love was not something I possessed.
It got progressively worse as we got older, of course.
I agree with nothing she has done so far in her life.
And I think it's fair to say we don't 'talk' it's more like.... flippant commentary.
You know, when someone asks you how you are and you ask them but neither of you
actually give a flying shit? It's like that.
The only thing that ever made any sense to me was music.
I consider it a lifeline.
A surge of panic goes through me when I go out without my ipod.
Listening to music, head down or glancing out the window, making no eye
contact with anyone is how you can normally find me on public transport.
I relate to music the way people relate to friends.
Music is the only thing that's been consistent in my life.
People have come and gone, but music never leaves.
If anything, it keeps on coming back. And multiplying by the week.
There is song for every moment and ever feeling I've ever had.
And that's why I listen to music.
My brother moved out first. Then my sister.
And then there was me.
I moved out twice. And learnt that both of my sister's are dating complete assholes.
Which for the life of me I could not fit an explanation of that into a blog post... it
would end up like the thickness of a bible.
I've lived in England, Wales and Scotland. In motels, B&B's, on a island and on caravan
sites.
And yet, I'm still living with my parents in a flat in a town that I have no attachment to.
I've never had any attachment to any place we've lived.
Nowhere has ever felt like home and it still doesn't.
Therefore, I have no idea where home is. And never really know if I will.
This week, like most weeks really made me realize if there's one thing I suck at
more than anything, it's multitasking.
I cannot focus of doing more than one thing at a time. In the same day.
It's running and come home 3 times a week.
Anything else I have to do on those days is usually done wrong, half-assed or not
at all.
Much to the annoyance of most people involved I imagine.
Media interview 2 was accomplished this week.
It's ten times worse than being in the paper....
Having just got over being in the local paper (which barely made a difference)
I am now beginning to mentally prepare myself for an interview being aired on TV
in the next few weeks.
It's for the local news which is aired to a fair few counties. Sooo it's a much bigger
audience and if this doesn't make a difference than I am officially collapsing into a heap on
the floor.
I kid you not.
I have not agreed to having my face on tv for a laugh...
P.S - I am currently planning on not watching it when it airs. Not at least with everyone
else in the same room.
xo
It turns out when you pledge to run 100 miles for charity you kinda have a lot of work to do...
Training. Planning. Researching races. Paying entry fees. And my least favourite of all, promotion.
Promotion would be relatively easy - by all means it's not 'difficult', just tedious - if talking was
a normal occurrence in my life like it is for everyone else.
You send press releases out knowing quite well there's even a slight chance the phone is gonna ring
or you're gonna have to sit in front of someone sometime soon and talk to them like you actually
know what you're talking about.
I have a habit of feeling like everything I say makes no sense whatsoever. Like, it's all shit.
I'm just talking a bunch of crap basically.
But promotion is over and done with. Flyers are pinned to every ad board I could find.
And I missed the phone call but thankfully did an interview via email
and my face is currently in the paper (...I know right).
I was unfortunate enough to have my face in the paper many times when I was a kid.
She thought it would help me, but she was wrong. Mainly, she wanted exposure for the
condition I had and she wanted more people to be aware and understand better.
But did I really need to be the poster child?
It was my face and her words. And as a child, it didn't add up to me. I didn't
understand. I just went along with it.
She kept all the newspaper cuttings in a kitchen drawer and showed people
now and again.
A few years passed, I hit about 11 and I no longer wanted to play nice.
I hated her from then on, for putting my face out there for the entire country to see.
It had been years of the same bullying, the same moving around, the same switching schools
and the same being misunderstood by everyone. And I just wanted to be better.
As far as I could gather, aged 11, nothing got better by my face being in the paper.
In fact, in the long run it made things worse.
I would walk into school to hear that they'd seen me in the paper.
And my heart would sink to the ground because I didn't want the attention it
brought. The only thing I wanted was for it to be gone. For everything to be normal.
She probably still has the cuttings somewhere.
Not much really changed with her. A few years later she agreed to taking part
in a documentary that I was filmed for but later would not air.
Even up to last year, she still did it.
She, once again, agreed to taking part in a different documentary before
talking to me about it first and before I know it I'm sat in front of a camera.
The whole thing has no logic in it and never has.
So I grew up hating her for that. The papers, the media.
If sitting in dozens of white, clinical, empty rooms as a very young child wasn't
enough. She then made me sit in front of people asking me questions I wouldn't be answering
while they filmed me.
You see what I mean about no logic being involved?
Above all, I spent a hell of a lot of years being bitter and frustrated at her
for putting me in positions I never wanted to be in and making decisions for
me.
If it was down to her she would still be making decisions about my life
and I'd still be not getting any better or moving forward in any way.
I'm still bitter and frustrated. But at different things that aren't entirely her fault, I guess.
I planned my suicide four times, which she's unaware about.
There's been dozens of cuts on my arms, she's never noticed.
I've cried myself to sleep every day for weeks and weeks, she's never known.
A stranger on the internet has literally saved my life with a song
(The Way She Feels - Between The Trees) and yet, she doesn't even know there's
anything wrong.
Our whole relationship is just lost. It's as though it's just floating through the air.
It's not connected to either of us and neither of us are trying to connect it and put it
back together.
It's just... open.
xo
Sarcasm at it's very finest is portrayed in today's post...
Let's use my amazing list-making skills and gloss over what has happened and what you're about to read
(..then you can decide if you just wanna read the list or the actual post. Convenient).
1. Monday bought a brand new breakdown that went entirely unnoticed.
2. My uncle died and we all pretended everything was okay. (a fine art we have
perfected in this house)
3. They're going to the funeral. I am not invited.
4. In relation to #3; she's leaving on mothers day and therefore leaving me here. By myself.
5. There is no #5 (...I have this thing about numbers. It would probably take another 10 blog posts to explain it. But there has to be a 5, basically)
It takes me a while to process things and I don't fully process anything that's happened until a time has come where I can just sit, thinking freely.
Considering I barely leave the house, have no job, friends or career you'd think that was simple.
But there's a storm in my head. And you have to wait for it to pass before you dare tempting fate.
Do you really wanna step out just to be struck by lightning?
You don't. I hear it hurts.
I don't have the clearest of minds. Things pass slowly through the day. They linger. Like clouds.
And at night, it's kinda like a motorway. Things are speeding past. And you catch glimpses of them and hope to hell there's no car crashes.
It's always busy, day and night. The only thing that changes is the speed.
And you have to decide whether it's easier to sit and think when it's slow and busy. Or fast and busy.
Because there's definitely no in between.
I crossed a motorway once when I was a kid.
We were homeless, momentarily living in a motel and my dad worked on the other side of the motorway.
Sitting down and thinking about things is like crossing that motorway.
I had to do it, to get to the other side. But there wasn't a single moment I thought I'd make it across.
Everything's so much bigger when you're a kid. And motorways are big anyway.
I have to sit down and think about things to process them. But do I really want to
add more things to my mind or visit my current state of mind? Not really, no.
So it happens at night. Usually when I can't sleep. I have to occupy my mind when I can't sleep otherwise
negativity goes round and round and round until it feels like the storm is coming back for good.
After a few hours, things get processed and I'm either exhausted or pissed off.
Sometimes pissed off that I'm exhausted.
When something happens... it happens, I feel whatever I feel momentarily, then I try and forget about it. And move on.
Except I don't move on. Or forget it. I just talk myself into thinking that's happened.
I don't think about it. I don't process it. I don't confront it.
It manifests in my mind.
It gets put in a much-taller-than-me pile of 'feelings you need to process'
that I try and shove under the rug until one day I trip over it.
The short version is... I internally exploded on monday because nothing was processed.
The internet then died and I cried for about 4 hours straight and went to sleep at 1:30am.
After all that, no one batted an eye lid and it's as though nothing even happened.
Which frustrated me even further.
I'm bitter.
My mother is leaving on Mother's Day and coming back fuck knows when.
The only thing she is bothered by is that it's Mother's Day,
not that she is leaving me here, by myself, when she fully knows I hate the very idea of it.
But I expected this. And I accept it more than her going away in May.
She's going to my uncle's funeral and I know that's something she has to do.
And I didn't expect to be invited to a funeral for someone I never knew.
So I won't be fighting this battle.
I can't fight the 'she's going away in may to visit my sister and leaving me here. Again' battle either.
It's not even a battle. To fight you need at least two people. And she is so completely oblivious.
This family is screwed. I swear.
It's like it's an invite only club and I never get the invite - Which is stupid because believe it or not
I'm actually a part of this family.
Or getting locked out of your own house and knocking on the door but no one lets you in (this has happened).
How does this family even work? I'm unsure we even do work. We're corrupt.
We're several different pieces from different puzzles and when you try to put us together it just doesn't work.
So, she's leaving. Twice.
And right now all I can do is hope every day she's gone isn't like last Monday.
If it is, I'm screwed.
The balance shifts when she's not here.
I purposely try to balance for her sake. I don't know why.
xo
F.H
She belongs in the clouds, she told me once and I never forgot,
She is only at home when on airplanes,
High up in the sky,
Only content when clouds are in view,
When she’s the same height as them,
Sitting in a cramped space, looking out of a small window,
Looking down on the world, eye level with a cloud,
A free spirit’s work is never done,
And she is gone again,
To seek is to be free,
She is free only when she is not here,
She is caged, contained and trapped by this sad, empty town,
Dragging her small, bare feet up and down the cold pavement,
She knows in her heart they were not made to walk this road,
She finds herself looking up at the not so blue sky,
Wishing on airplanes as they make white lines in the sky,
So near, yet so far,
Our souls are separate now,
Not just by miles, for souls are always together,
I am a lost soul, she is a free soul,
Perhaps I was blinded when the light hit her eyes,
Like when sunlight hits the ocean and diamonds appear on the waves,
It’s not real, you can see it with the widest eyes, but there’s no truth,
Sight deceives you,
It was just wishful thinking,
If love is blind, are souls blind?
She is somewhere far away,
I hope somewhere where the clouds are near to her,
Or where the sun is shining on her, enhancing her, enchanting her soul,
Bringing her back to life,
I hope she is dancing freely and gracefully, and her toes are sinking into
millions of tiny grains of warm sand,
She is everywhere, all at once,
She is the airplane making too much noise when you just want peace,
She is the line in the sky you compare to a silver lining because you didn't see the plane,
She is every blue sky,
And every ray of sun,
At her best, she is summer at it’s very peak,
When everyone’s happy and nothing is wrong,
I have not lost her,
I am lost and she is free,
And that’s the way it was always meant to be.
- “She Is (part II) // F. H
